LICENSING BILL

Southland Times, Issue 19124, 17 December 1923, Page 5

LICENSING BILL

THE NEW SOUTH WALES MEASURE. PROHIBITION LEADER’S CRITICISM. (By Tele® apb —Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) SYDNEY, December 14. The Assembly sat all night on the committee stages of the Liquor Bill. The committee rejected the clause requiring the registration of barmaids. It agreed to the compensation of employees with eighteen months’ service or over. The Rev. R. B. S. Hammond, in an interview, indignantly critised members who had pledged themselves to an immediate referendum and had voted for 1928. The Bill, he says, is the most astounding Christmas present ever given to the people. The defeat of is not so much a set-back to the issue as a blow to the honour of the public men who broke their pledges. Only thirty-one out of the fiftyfive who gave their pledge honoured it. They gave many and varied excuses, but these sounded like those given by Germany when the scrap of paper was torn up. The Assembly deleted the clause providing for a referendum on the question of Prohibition every five years after the holding of the first referendum. The Bill provides for compensation for licensees on the basis of the figures for the three years preceding the date on which the assessment was made. An attempt to change the hours of trading to eight o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock in the evening instead of as at present (six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock in the evening) failed. Voting on the referendum was made compulsory.